Encouraging scriptures for the day

by Kosonen 543 Replies latest jw friends

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  KalebOutWest

  The passage of Isaiah 13:9-16, like all Jewish oracles, deal with something the prophet saw in their past or were living through. Unfortunately people exposed to the theology of the Watchtower might still hold to the view that the writers were claiming to see the future.

  The passage that Queequeg cites is not about God killing infants but about "Isaiah" writing a commentary on what happened to and around the nations of Israel and Judah during and after their exiles based on theology that, interestingly, all denominations of Judaism (including Orthodoxy) currently rejects.

  The theology (which is likely that of Second or Third Isaiah) is that God punishes nations for their sins by bringing losses in wars upon them.

  The words of Isaiah 13 describe what are supposed to be an eyewitness account lamenting the fall of Babylon after the manner of the fall of Nineveh. But the details are wrong. In fact it's "total destruction" descriptions are just poetic--as are likely the "infants" being "dashed to pieces" and the "wives being ravished" in verse 16 as the original invasion of the Persians was sudden and rather peaceful, and its was only during the Babylonian revolt that happened later wherein the Babylonians themselves took their own lives to keep from falling into the hands of the Persians (with some Babylonians strangling their own wives and children) that children died.
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  Kosonen

  As the wild beast will be real, so will its image and its name and the number of its name. In the near future we might see it. The world is planning for this right now since the Covid thing.

  Revelation 15:2 And I saw something like a sea of glass mingled with fire, and those who are victorious over the wild beast and its image and the number of its name were standing by the sea of glass, holding harps of God.
• 

  vienne

  totaly irrational.
• 

  Queequeg

  "Yet she increased her prostitution, remembering the days of her youth when she engaged in prostitution in the land of Egypt. She lusted after their genitals – as large as those of donkeys, and their seminal emission was as strong as that of stallions."

  - Ezekiel 23:19
  
  
• 

  KalebOutWest

  "I am an idiot because I chat online with idiots. You are too if you read this."

  --Made You Look 1:1, from I Feel So Grown Up To Make Pee-Pee Quotes from the Bible, I Must Have the IQ of A Jar Of Mayo
• 

  Duran

  • "May your own fountain be blessed, And may you rejoice with the wife of your youth, A loving doe, a graceful mountain goat. Let her breasts satisfy you at all times. May you be captivated by her love constantly." - Proverbs 5:18,19
    
• 

  Kosonen

  Exodus 7:20 Immediately Moses and Aaron did just as Jehovah had commanded. He lifted up the rod and struck the water that was in the Nile River before the eyes of Pharʹaoh and his servants, and all the water that was in the river was turned into blood.

  Why would someone argue that in Revelation 16 a similar thing will not be literal?

  Revelation 16:4 The third one poured out his bowl into the rivers and the springs of water. And they became blood. 5 I heard the angel over the waters say: “You, the One who is and who was, the loyal One, are righteous, for you have issued these judgments, 6 because they poured out the blood of holy ones and of prophets, and you have given them blood to drink; they deserve it.” 7 And I heard the altar say: “Yes, Jehovah God, the Almighty, true and righteous are your judgments.”
• 

  KalebOutWest

  Kasonen wrote:

  Why would someone argue that in Revelation 16 a similar thing will not be literal?

  Because the text of Exodus 7:20 is not literal either but based on the Haggadah, the Passover story that is told during the Seder celebration.

  It was once believed that the Haggadah was written after the Exodus account. And it is true that modern versions are. But the one you read in Exodus is based on an even older version, maybe oral or maybe written, but obviously from at least two combined sources. One can find two or three different Haggadahs quoted in the Bible from different periods, especially if you use a Catholic/Orthodox Bible and read the last chapters of the Wisdom of Solomon.

  But Exodus and Psalms have different accounts of what happened and tell different stories too. Psalms 78 & 105 say there were only 7/8 plagues and not 10. The two idependent versions from the Psalms were interwoven into the final narrative of the Torah after the Exile from Babylon, not before. These stories are older than what came to be the Psalms themselves.

  When Exodus was composed, the narrative section was developed to teach Jewish people to celebrate the Passover with a story--the Haggadah--in order to hold a Seder celebration. At first, as early as the time of Ezra, priests wrote a part, but then, even later, non-priests added to it, and we went from the 7/8 to 10 plagues concept we know today:

  The Non-Priestly account lists eight plagues (blood, frogs, arov, pestilence, hail, locusts, darkness and death of the firstborn) and the Priestly source has only five (blood, frogs, lice, boils and death of the firstborn).--How Many Plagues Were There In Egypt? Suprise!, Haaretz, April 9, 2023.

  So if the first plagues came from sources which were not literal, then it is not likely that a book that calls itself an "apocalypse" in the first verse of its own writing is describing anything that we would expect to literally happen.
• 

  Queequeg

  "Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.
  

  But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.”

  Numbers 31:17,18
• 

  PetrW

  @KalebOutWest

  Finally, by definition "theodicy" is actually not a debate over why God would punish another with death if they deserved it. In the above drama, the pharaohs of Egypt are guilty of infanticide and thus God repays them by killing their firstborn, so to speak. (Again it's a liturgical drama, not a historical piece.) Why does theodicy not work here?

  Because theodicy is not questioning why God brings justice upon the wicked, but why God allows evil if God can obviously do something in the first place. That is the opposite of what happens in the Ten Plague story: Pharoahs kill Hebrew sons, God kills Pharoah's sons. That is a story about God actively bringing justice for all to see.

  *

  Your interesting post, has slipped off my radar😎😊 I'll try to respond to it later...